Covid-19: Doctor among 8 dead as Delhi hospital runs out of oxygen

As many as eight Covid patients including a doctor died at Delhi’s Batra hospital on Saturday afternoon after the facility ran out of medical oxygen. Six of the eight patients were admitted to the intensive care unit while two others were in the wards. Among the deceased is the hospital’s gastroenteritis head Dr R K Himthani (62). This is the second time the hospital facility ran out of oxygen supply in a span of a week.

“We didn’t get oxygen on time. We ran out of oxygen at 12 noon. We got oxygen at 1:35 pm. We have lost lives, including one of our own doctors,” hospital officials informed the high court,

“We hope no lives were lost,” the court responded, to which the hospital said: “We have… including one of our own… one doctor.”

Around 1 pm, Batra Hospital’s Executive Director, Dr Sudhanshu Bankata, issued a video SOS “We have just run out of oxygen… currently surviving on some cylinders. Over the next 10 minutes that will also run out. We are again in crisis mode. The Delhi government is trying to help but believe their tanker is still some distance away,” he said.

Later, Delhi minister Raghav Chaddha said, “Our SOS cryogenic tanker carrying Liquid Medical Oxygen is reaching Batra Hospital within 5 minutes. Their regular supplier of oxygen has defaulted yet again due to alleged ‘lack of oxygen supplies’ and is being pulled up.” However, by the time supply reached 8 people were already dead.

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The hospital has 327 patients out of which 48 are in the critical care unit. It has been raising alarms since Saturday morning over depleting levels of oxygen supply. “We are in SOS since 6 am today morning… we have 307 patients admitted, out of whom 230 are on oxygen support,” the hospital had said. Hospitals across the national capital had sent out SOS messages last week about depleting supplies of oxygen. Earlier this onth, 25 patients at the Rohini’s Jaipur Golden Hospital died due to shortage of medical oxygen. The Delhi government has maintained that the city is not getting its allocated quantity of life-saving gas.